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liralenOur very last day in China was in Shanghai. The hotel was in this middling area where it was within very close driving distance to the shopping districts, but there wasn't all that much that was withing walking distance.
I got up pretty late, had a leisurely breakfast, and Dad and John had something of a plan to go see some lake or another and or just walk through town. We got everything packed, but kept the luggage for once, since we were going to have to bring it with us when we met up with Jevons afternoon. I wasn't sure how far I'd be able to go, but decided that I wanted to try it instead of just sitting in the hotel room on our last day.
It was a little bittersweet in ways, as we'd done so much in so little time, and had explored so many things; but I was also completely worn out between the illness, doing all the travel, and simply having to deal with all the strange things here. Still, the morning was clear compared to the previous days, and we only had to get back to the hotel in time for our flight.
So we went walking, through the streets around the hotel toward the Bund and the river. We went behind the back of the hotel and immediately found ourselves amid housing buildings that weren't like a lot of what we'd walked by in the other cities. I think that on the most part, the tours really do try to protect us, and I keep getting this feeling that in China they really don't want us to be running around on our own.
And in these enormous cities I haven't really felt as safe as I do at home, and I'll readily admit that some of that is entirely because it's so unfamiliar. Whereas I've walked, without a qualm, through quite a few major cities in the US, I also knew that I'd be able to feel the vibe for that part of the city I was going through, and keeping to the tourist parts was safer.
Still, by striding away from the polished and posh digs we were given, we stepped into a small adventure.
I'll admit that I don't really see that many feral cats in the US, so it was mildly shocking to see these kittens huddled up against the cold of the early spring morning. One or two were clearly sick, but the others were watching out for them.
Getting to see the cluttered garage was kind of cool, like looking into the backdoor of someone's life. And I'll readily admit that I would never have been on a highway with concrete barriers for sides while riding a bike and carrying a ladder. The bicyclists, even in Shanghai, seemed far more at home than any bicyclist would have been in any of the US cities. I think that so many of the people on these streets once rode bikes on them that they look out for the bicyclists better than we do at home.
On this walk, though, it really struck me just how much of Big City this really is, and that it's on a scale that we just don't see in the US. That walking through Denver, there's this small spot of concentrated high rises, but MOST of town is smaller, more urban, with just one or two story places, not building after building after building of multi-stories that are packed to the gills or utterly empty.
The last few days, while we were in Shanghai, we kept driving by this old firehouse. It has actually been updated, but has kept the old Victorian facade, so that it looks so much like a historical fire house in the US.
We got to look into it this morning, and see the shiny new firetrucks, all the equipment stacked up against the walls,a nd the laundry hanging up on the upper floors. It was kind of cool to see it up close and really get to see that the round house was useful for the number of trucks they had. Though I have to admit I did wonder what would happen if one of the umpteen skyscrapers actually did catch fire and how that would be mitigated by equipments like this, though maybe it isn't really for that, since most of those kinds of buildings have firefighting already built in.
We did cross the very busy street right here, as it was a relatively quiet intersection. Even with a "walk" light, we were dodging cars making their turns both with and against the right of way.
Jet said, "It's like playing Frogger!"
And then we came across this "crosswalk". The streets coming both ways were so enormous, there was this huge, raised circle above the traffic. Of course, vendors took advantage of the relatively captive audience walking through, and had their wares spread on the floor of the walkway for a good two-thirds of the surface. I was amazed at how much was up there!
It did, however, make it possible to cross all ways, and we kept walking toward town. It wasn't the best of neighborhoods. Most of the multi-story buildings looked closed, shut down, and a few had For Rent signs on them. There was an abandoned hotel, with a single working Starbucks in the lobby. The Starbucks, being open, were cheerful about pointing out the public restroom in the building, which was in pretty awful shape. Still.... better than nothing, and there was soap by the leaking sink.
If this was any indication of the economy outside of the shiny In Districts, it was pretty bleak, and kind of haunting to see big building after big building neglected, dirty, and empty. We went through alleys and some really rough smelling back roads and finally ended up by the river.
This is an old Russian embassy that is now just a Russian business building. There's still some comradeship between Russian and China, but it's different than before. It was on the river crossing road, so the front was well maintained, but it was interesting to know that only a stone's throw behind this big building were piss-stinking alleys.
Right next to the Russian building was a drawbridge with four lanes of traffic each way, and a beautiful view of the commercial district from the platform of the bridge.
On the river side of the bridge, it was clear and a great view of the new skyscrapers in the business district. Without all the fog we could actually see the tops of all the buildings while still seeing the vehicles in the water.
The fantastic shapes and colors were clearer, too. And the various balls, I think, were the pearl exchange, though each of these "pearls" were representative of a lot of things, including a whole globe of the Earth on the ground.
Right by the end of the bridge was this old, gracious hotel, too. It had been used since the Opium Wars, and still had some of the best food and most Western accommodations in the city.
Dad told us about staying at a place we'd driven by on the way back home from Suzhou. It was enormous, with a garden of its own, and it had been particularly splendid.
We never did find the lake that Dad was aiming to get to, but we did find this! It was just a sculpture in some business park, and it was so beautiful....
By the time we'd reached the bridge half our time had run out, so we headed back toward the hotel as quickly as we could, because we didn't want to miss our shuttle to the airport. We went back the way we'd come, and one of the businesses that had caught Jet's eye on the way out, also caught us all on the way back.
There was a tiny place in one of those empty business buildings that was making these one-wheeled transports. The steps on either side were what controlled the things.
The also had something that looked more like a Segway, but these were supposedly cheaper, since there was so much less to them! I'm still not exactly sure how they'd work, but it seemed like they had half a dozen prototypes out and in use. Jet decided it was worth getting a picture next to them in case they do hit it big eventually.
That was fun. We got back in plenty of time, took all our stuff down to the lobby and had the front hotel clerk take all our luggage away from us and store it behind the desk. We said that we were only going to be waiting for a little while, but he insisted on taking it. Pretty much everyone other than Jeff and Millie and the four of us were already gone.
Jevons appeared a little before time and we got to sit and just talk with him for a while. He was riding with us to the airport because it was easier for him to get a ride home from the airport than from downtown proper, so that was nice. We saw the usual things as we drove along, but it was different knowing that we were leaving it all behind.
One of the things I finally got shot of was one of the high rise apartment buildings with laundry and open windows all the way to the top. It didn't look quite so odd anymore, after more than a week of seeing buildings like this, but it was still worth capturing on electrons. *laughs*
There was also a glimpse of the actual, present day Russian Embassy on the Russian Concession by the freeway to the airport. I got to see the Shanghai Art Museum one more time, and several other things on the way. It was interesting to know that I had a lot of mixed feelings about leaving "already." It wasn't really all that much time that we'd been in China, and I know that Dad had been talking about tacking on another trip to Japan at the end of it so that we could do it while we were there. And we'd come all this way...
But I was also pretty sick, and we'd done so MUCH each day. With the way the tour had been planned, the days had all been full, and I really appreciated the guidance we got when we were in all the places we'd been. The few ventures we'd done on our own hadn't been quite as well supported with data, history, or just the stories that were told about how things were.
We left Jevons at the airport, and we all went in together. The four of us had some dinner at a little Thai place, and then headed to the gate. The flight to Beijing was uneventful, but in Beijing we ran into Kelly and Jim! Their flight to the Bay Area had been too full, so they were pushed to our flight to LA, which was sad for them, because they'd been in the Beijing Airport all day, but it was nice to see them one last time.
Then we ran into unexpected friends. Mike DeGrazia and his family, who all live in Longmont, were visiting his wife's family in China and they were coming home on the same plane we were! That was pretty fun. We got to talk with them in the airport, and got to say hi here and there during the flight itself.
The flight to LA was long and pretty much uneventful. We slept, watched movies, and I wrote stuff down for when we had to declare things for customs. Once in LA, however, everything seemed to go a little haywire. Dad's plane was also too full, so he was pushed to a flight the next morning! So he went off to his hotel.
Our flight got delayed, first to 10 pm, then to midnight, and we got dinner vouchers out of that deal, but then out flight was canceled completely when the crew that came in at 1am decided they were too tired to fly back out again. Not that I blamed them, but it would have been nice to have them decide that earlier.
So we ended up staying in a hotel in LA for the night. It was actually perfect in some ways, as we'd intended on doing absolutely nothing but sleep when we got home anyway, and this was kind of a way to do exactly that. It was a nice Renaissance hotel, and the airline picked up the tab. In the morning, when we were being driven back to the airport, I got to see the jacaranda trees in bloom! Our meal vouchers weren't enough for an actual *meal*, the next day John got a whole handful of tasty snacks for us in addition to a pizza that Jet and I shared.
Since we were flying on American Eagle, we got to dodge planes out on the tarmac again. We got home in the middle of the day, which was a much nicer option than our original plan for getting home in the middle of the night, so it actually all worked out for the best. It was amazing just getting home, sleeping in our own beds, and finally catching up with our lives again.
It's taken me a while to process everything that happened there, some of it is now in these journal entries, and I 'm glad I got to write them all with the help of the photographs and the handwritten journal I'd used while I was there. I'm really happy we went. Very very happy that Jet got to really experience what life is like over there and talk over some of the things he saw or wondered about when we were there. I loved that Dad got to room with Jet and they shared a lot of the travel experience together.
Thinking about it, it was probably the best way to get introduced to the country we could have picked. So many things, all at once, and getting to see such a huge number of cultural icons in one go was as amazing as getting first-hand experience of just what kinds of impact that kind of population density has. The length and breadth of the culture, history, and land itself made a huge impression. I'm also really grateful for what I have here, now. Whew. And have a better framework with which to think of China, her governance, and what's happening with her people and her economy.
I'm glad we took the chance we had to go, but I'm also really really happy to be home again.
I got up pretty late, had a leisurely breakfast, and Dad and John had something of a plan to go see some lake or another and or just walk through town. We got everything packed, but kept the luggage for once, since we were going to have to bring it with us when we met up with Jevons afternoon. I wasn't sure how far I'd be able to go, but decided that I wanted to try it instead of just sitting in the hotel room on our last day.
It was a little bittersweet in ways, as we'd done so much in so little time, and had explored so many things; but I was also completely worn out between the illness, doing all the travel, and simply having to deal with all the strange things here. Still, the morning was clear compared to the previous days, and we only had to get back to the hotel in time for our flight.
And in these enormous cities I haven't really felt as safe as I do at home, and I'll readily admit that some of that is entirely because it's so unfamiliar. Whereas I've walked, without a qualm, through quite a few major cities in the US, I also knew that I'd be able to feel the vibe for that part of the city I was going through, and keeping to the tourist parts was safer.
Still, by striding away from the polished and posh digs we were given, we stepped into a small adventure.
I'll admit that I don't really see that many feral cats in the US, so it was mildly shocking to see these kittens huddled up against the cold of the early spring morning. One or two were clearly sick, but the others were watching out for them.
Getting to see the cluttered garage was kind of cool, like looking into the backdoor of someone's life. And I'll readily admit that I would never have been on a highway with concrete barriers for sides while riding a bike and carrying a ladder. The bicyclists, even in Shanghai, seemed far more at home than any bicyclist would have been in any of the US cities. I think that so many of the people on these streets once rode bikes on them that they look out for the bicyclists better than we do at home.
On this walk, though, it really struck me just how much of Big City this really is, and that it's on a scale that we just don't see in the US. That walking through Denver, there's this small spot of concentrated high rises, but MOST of town is smaller, more urban, with just one or two story places, not building after building after building of multi-stories that are packed to the gills or utterly empty.
We got to look into it this morning, and see the shiny new firetrucks, all the equipment stacked up against the walls,a nd the laundry hanging up on the upper floors. It was kind of cool to see it up close and really get to see that the round house was useful for the number of trucks they had. Though I have to admit I did wonder what would happen if one of the umpteen skyscrapers actually did catch fire and how that would be mitigated by equipments like this, though maybe it isn't really for that, since most of those kinds of buildings have firefighting already built in.
We did cross the very busy street right here, as it was a relatively quiet intersection. Even with a "walk" light, we were dodging cars making their turns both with and against the right of way.
Jet said, "It's like playing Frogger!"
It did, however, make it possible to cross all ways, and we kept walking toward town. It wasn't the best of neighborhoods. Most of the multi-story buildings looked closed, shut down, and a few had For Rent signs on them. There was an abandoned hotel, with a single working Starbucks in the lobby. The Starbucks, being open, were cheerful about pointing out the public restroom in the building, which was in pretty awful shape. Still.... better than nothing, and there was soap by the leaking sink.
This is an old Russian embassy that is now just a Russian business building. There's still some comradeship between Russian and China, but it's different than before. It was on the river crossing road, so the front was well maintained, but it was interesting to know that only a stone's throw behind this big building were piss-stinking alleys.
Right next to the Russian building was a drawbridge with four lanes of traffic each way, and a beautiful view of the commercial district from the platform of the bridge.
The fantastic shapes and colors were clearer, too. And the various balls, I think, were the pearl exchange, though each of these "pearls" were representative of a lot of things, including a whole globe of the Earth on the ground.
Dad told us about staying at a place we'd driven by on the way back home from Suzhou. It was enormous, with a garden of its own, and it had been particularly splendid.
By the time we'd reached the bridge half our time had run out, so we headed back toward the hotel as quickly as we could, because we didn't want to miss our shuttle to the airport. We went back the way we'd come, and one of the businesses that had caught Jet's eye on the way out, also caught us all on the way back.
The also had something that looked more like a Segway, but these were supposedly cheaper, since there was so much less to them! I'm still not exactly sure how they'd work, but it seemed like they had half a dozen prototypes out and in use. Jet decided it was worth getting a picture next to them in case they do hit it big eventually.
That was fun. We got back in plenty of time, took all our stuff down to the lobby and had the front hotel clerk take all our luggage away from us and store it behind the desk. We said that we were only going to be waiting for a little while, but he insisted on taking it. Pretty much everyone other than Jeff and Millie and the four of us were already gone.
One of the things I finally got shot of was one of the high rise apartment buildings with laundry and open windows all the way to the top. It didn't look quite so odd anymore, after more than a week of seeing buildings like this, but it was still worth capturing on electrons. *laughs*
But I was also pretty sick, and we'd done so MUCH each day. With the way the tour had been planned, the days had all been full, and I really appreciated the guidance we got when we were in all the places we'd been. The few ventures we'd done on our own hadn't been quite as well supported with data, history, or just the stories that were told about how things were.
We left Jevons at the airport, and we all went in together. The four of us had some dinner at a little Thai place, and then headed to the gate. The flight to Beijing was uneventful, but in Beijing we ran into Kelly and Jim! Their flight to the Bay Area had been too full, so they were pushed to our flight to LA, which was sad for them, because they'd been in the Beijing Airport all day, but it was nice to see them one last time.
The flight to LA was long and pretty much uneventful. We slept, watched movies, and I wrote stuff down for when we had to declare things for customs. Once in LA, however, everything seemed to go a little haywire. Dad's plane was also too full, so he was pushed to a flight the next morning! So he went off to his hotel.
Our flight got delayed, first to 10 pm, then to midnight, and we got dinner vouchers out of that deal, but then out flight was canceled completely when the crew that came in at 1am decided they were too tired to fly back out again. Not that I blamed them, but it would have been nice to have them decide that earlier.
So we ended up staying in a hotel in LA for the night. It was actually perfect in some ways, as we'd intended on doing absolutely nothing but sleep when we got home anyway, and this was kind of a way to do exactly that. It was a nice Renaissance hotel, and the airline picked up the tab. In the morning, when we were being driven back to the airport, I got to see the jacaranda trees in bloom! Our meal vouchers weren't enough for an actual *meal*, the next day John got a whole handful of tasty snacks for us in addition to a pizza that Jet and I shared.
Since we were flying on American Eagle, we got to dodge planes out on the tarmac again. We got home in the middle of the day, which was a much nicer option than our original plan for getting home in the middle of the night, so it actually all worked out for the best. It was amazing just getting home, sleeping in our own beds, and finally catching up with our lives again.
It's taken me a while to process everything that happened there, some of it is now in these journal entries, and I 'm glad I got to write them all with the help of the photographs and the handwritten journal I'd used while I was there. I'm really happy we went. Very very happy that Jet got to really experience what life is like over there and talk over some of the things he saw or wondered about when we were there. I loved that Dad got to room with Jet and they shared a lot of the travel experience together.
Thinking about it, it was probably the best way to get introduced to the country we could have picked. So many things, all at once, and getting to see such a huge number of cultural icons in one go was as amazing as getting first-hand experience of just what kinds of impact that kind of population density has. The length and breadth of the culture, history, and land itself made a huge impression. I'm also really grateful for what I have here, now. Whew. And have a better framework with which to think of China, her governance, and what's happening with her people and her economy.
I'm glad we took the chance we had to go, but I'm also really really happy to be home again.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 03:54 am (UTC)Yeah... those high rises with laundry hanging out of them always just... bemused me. *laughs* I don't think that in the US you can even open a window on a high rise... so seeing all this stuff hanging out the windows just amazed me.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 01:09 am (UTC)I'm very glad you all enjoyed it (a shame about the sickness!) and it has been really interesting to read your entries and see the photographs.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 03:56 am (UTC)Yes. Definitely enjoyed it and my father's been commenting to me in private about these entries saying that he's very glad to have them, too, as he hasn't remembered it all... so having something in detail was very nice.
It has certainly been interesting going back over the memories...
Thank you so much for the lovely comments along the way! It's quite encouraging while I'm writing these.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 06:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 01:02 pm (UTC)*a hundred hugs*
I am incredibly thankful you and your family got to walk about without something happening to you. Traffic lights and road lines are mere suggestions there, and pedestrians seem to be the motorists' daily entertainment - much like the game whack-a-mole. For that, a hundred hugs your way. You're too brilliant of a person and writer to be lost to the streets of Shanghai =).
Shanghai... can't say I miss that city. It's not all bad, but most experiences still make my teeth grind. I just want to say as a general warning for anyone visiting China, if there's someone coming up to you to ask/beg for money, avoid the person - at all costs, even if he/she is a child. I was lucky my father and a company driver was around to get me out of that mess as the child's entire family appeared out of nowhere and ambushed me. This was 1999. I haven't had anything like that happen again, but the memory made me avoid it at all costs, so... it may not be as bad anymore. *shudders*
The city itself is huge and too densely packed - sole contributor to how dirty it is, over done through the economic boom, and now falling apart or abandoned as the economy tanked and then tried to right itself. The biggest project of Shanghai during the last decade, I think, is its subway and the highways (one of which shortens travel between Shanghai and Suzhou so we visited, often). I wouldn't recommend the subway for a tourist during the busiest hours as the possibility of coming out maimed is about 80%. I used it to get to and from work when there so I'm used to the abuse, but urgh.
Driven by that horse statue many times. There are a few places known for its "glorified flea markets" where you can get some very neat collectibles. Now most of them are machine made, but I've loved the few small stalls that still sell hand made beauties. Best to have someone native do the haggling though.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 10:50 pm (UTC)Mmm... it's interesting seeing what's behind the image presented. Thanks for your details and I'm glad you made it out of that mess! eek.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 11:43 pm (UTC)My parents were in Shanghai full time between 2000 and 2010 since my father worked there. That's where I went summer and winter breaks from 2001 through 2007. After graduating in 2007, I lived in Shanghai full time for a year and worked with my parents. Sometime between 2005 and 2006, my mother's good friends were transferred to Suzhou, China for a couple of years - hence our frequent trips there. Parents closed their plant in 2010 when the new labor laws became all sorts of troublesome for foreigner-owned businesses, including but not limited to said laws being altered almost on a yearly basis.
I was back in Shanghai last year. It's changed, again...
*grinds teeth and curbs need to rant*....
Glad you made so many good memories though because one day, China might do something crazy like the 3-stooges dam incident again (I call it that for a reason) and your pictures are the only evidence anything existed =).
no subject
Date: 2013-10-02 04:32 am (UTC)Wow... so a LOT of time there...thanks for saying about what you've seen! Wow.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-30 05:39 pm (UTC)I have to agree with the bit about protecting you for tours in general, not just about Chinese tours. What varies is what it is you're being protected from. I got a chance to wander off from my tour in Shanghai also, on my first trip to China many years ago, and really have never taken a tour in China since. I say this because I got a very similar feeling in the tour I went on in Cairo last year. (In that case I think the tour guide thought he'd make more money if we were more dependent on him.)
I think most Chinese cities are reasonably safe, most of the time. They can be tiring and stressful, of course, but crime and civil disorder don't feature the way they do in many places. Even Shenzhen, which has a reputation for lawlessness and chaos, is pretty safe compared to many other big cities around the world. My last visit to China concentrated around taking the subways in all the cities I hadn't yet gotten a chance to ride the subways--transit enthusiast that I am--outside of rush hour, they're a fairly easy and efficient way to get around. (During rush hour, they're sardine cans.) But I had a lot of fun navigating their systems, and I think I was safer riding transit in Beijing, Tianjin, Wuhan, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen than I might be at similar times and places in, for example, Chicago, Philadelphia, or the Bay Area.
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Date: 2013-09-30 10:52 pm (UTC)It's kind of cool having that feeling confirmed, and yeah, I suspect it is different things in different places depending on the tour. And you've travelled a great deal more than we have.
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Date: 2013-10-01 01:36 am (UTC):) I've joked that my travel basically consists of flying somewhere and then taking transit to interesting places to eat. Beijing's great for that, because there are so many great places to eat. Aside from the irritating fact that the subway shuts down at midnight and the night bus system is pretty skeletal, you can get to those places without ever setting foot in a taxi.
The thing about crime in Chinese cities is that your chances of getting shot or mugged are definitely lower than in the States, but your chance of being pickpocked or scammed are almost equally likely higher. But I think in terms of microclimates when I think of urban crime. It seems more useful to look on a neighborhood level than in terms of cities overall.
Also:
That walking through Denver, there's this small spot of concentrated high rises, but MOST of town is smaller, more urban, with just one or two story places, not building after building after building of multi-stories that are packed to the gills or utterly empty.
Yeah, that pattern is very North American: a single group of high rises, and then a lot of low sprawl. I think of places like Houston or Atlanta when I think of that pattern. Even LA and Toronto are basically like that. New York is an exception in that it's built more like a Chinese city, with multiple clusters of high rises, and that's mostly Manhattan.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-02 04:29 am (UTC)I love your way of traveling... eating what's really there is often important to me, but getting the gut microbes to match up in just one trip was a little too much for me.
Mmm... I like your comparison to the shaping of the cities, too. Vancouver was like that, too.... LA's almost all sprawl... SD is that way, too, as is Seattle. I'll have to visit New York City someday... I keep saying that, and I even have friends who live a train ride away. Thanks!!!
no subject
Date: 2013-10-02 05:38 am (UTC)Glad to hear you like reading my trip reports! I'm going to try and post a few photos from the huge backlog I have here so you may be seeing some more soon.
A tip which I picked up somewhere: one thing that helps the intestinal flora adapt is eating local yogurt with active cultures. I can't remember having any problems on my last trip to China, and it may have had something to do with my drinking the local yogurt in Beijing as soon as I could.
(I actually love the yogurt in North China, so I was looking forward to it as a treat. It comes in these cute little earthenware jars that you pay a deposit on but you can just keep if you want. I kept one as a souvenir to bring home.)
Anyway, it seems to help. I like yogurt anyway, so it's no hardship. The hard part is figuring out where to get the old-fashioned kind with active cultures!
I'll have to visit New York City someday... I keep saying that, and I even have friends who live a train ride away. Thanks!!!
Drop me a note before you do and I'll try and meet up with you folks. My parents are a train ride away so I might be able to time a visit to match up. There is, obviously, lots of great food to share in New York. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-10-02 05:47 am (UTC)Definitely!! If we go to New York, I'll definitely drop you a line!! That would be really wonderful, both to get to see you AND to try out a place you love there! Wow. :-)
no subject
Date: 2013-10-01 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-02 04:30 am (UTC)